Blind Review Friday

Time
for another edition of Blind Review Friday.

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Ice Cream

To buy an ice, my aunt and I walked up Gwilym Terrace
then Plymouth Street,
to a white café where a Seven-Up sign hung by a nail
and cooling lorries ticked in the car park

We left Nan alone in
her kitchen, hot and old
Bring me an ice, there’s a lovely hair flying
from its pins, her kissed face smelling of Pears
ankle boots fidgeting under
her patched black skirt.

On their wedding day, my grandfather’s hands spanned her waist.
He made their first married breakfast and carried it
upstairs
bare feet on the stair carpet
a bracelet hidden under the
bread.

My aunt and I chose ice creams from the deep freeze
asked for
wafers, lemonade,
sat at a hot window seat where
I watched mine melt in
its metal bowl.

By the time we got back Nan was asleep in her chair
one hand holding the other on her lap, gentle,
on her thumb-skins the
imprint of her journey
to this point.

Who would tell her, when she
woke,
that we hadn’t brought her an ice from the café at the end of Plymouth Street,
because it was too hot,
and from there to here was just too
much?